Aubin: Quebec’s welcome to immigrants is poor, yet few provinces’ economies are more in need of them

The curious thing about narrow-mindedness is the way it can act against one’s own ultimate self-interest. Two very different examples came up this week.

One is a reader’s objection to a point I made in recent columns – that the student boycott will weaken the quality of education at Quebec’s francophone universities and CEGEPs (harder hit by the boycott than anglo campuses) because of compressed classes, crowding, a demonstrated failure to maintain stability and a reputation that could make attracting top faculty harder. “So the quality of education is declining,” said I.R. in an email. “As an English-speaking Quebecer, why should I be concerned?”

The answer: Eighty per cent of Quebecers are francophone, and the prosperity of this province will always largely depend on their know-how. If the calibre of Quebec’s education engines weakens, the province’s knowledge economy will eventually weaken – and so, accordingly, will its fiscal health and its capacity to provide decent services to everyone, we anglos included. That’s why.

But it’s the second example that I want to focus on. It’s a more important case of how narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness can go together.

We’ve more or less known for years that Quebec employers are often biased against job applicants with ethnic backgrounds, but now a report by Quebec’s human rights commission establishes this irrefutably.

Author Paul Eid’s research team responded to each of more than 500 career want ads with two fictitious job applications. The pairs of CVs contained comparable information regarding education, work experience and bilingualism skills. The main difference was names: One application would be from an imaginary person named Mohamed Nabil (Arab), Amadou Traoré (African) or Carlos Salazar (Latino); the name on the other would be Sébastien Bélanger, Mathieu Fortin or Maxime Demers. (Other pairings were from women.) The unsurprising result: Candidates with old-stock francophone names were 64 per cent more likely to be invited to an interview than les autres.

Too bad the test didn’t measure the attitude toward applicants with anglo names, but that’s another story. Or, on second thought, maybe not.

In any case, the study torpedoes the idea that it is only foreign credentials of uncertain quality that make employers wary of applicants of unusual backgrounds. Many of the rejected “applicants” indicated they were born, educated and socialized here.

Note, too, that a deficiency in French was not a factor in these cases. Bill 101 did not come into play.

The author suggests that while some employers might stigmatize certain ethnic or racial groups, often it was simply a case of bosses liking to be around people they resemble.

Whatever the motive, this resistance to a heterogeneous workplace runs counter to many of these employers’ interest in a prosperous, increasingly French-speaking Quebec.

The aging population will cause the workforce to shrink in a few years, and Quebec needs all the immigrants it can get to keep the economy humming and give this indebted province the tax revenue it requires. Yet a study two years ago by CIRANO shows that 19 per cent of immigrants age 25 to 54 are unemployed five years after their arrival; the national average is 12 per cent. Good people are leaving all the time for Toronto and Vancouver’s superior welcome mats.

My barber’s daughter speaks four languages and is studying finance at Concordia. Her parents, who arrived 15 years ago from Poland, question whether she’ll stay here – her surname sounds peculiar. The barber says that two family members, engineers, couldn’t get jobs here, but they found work at once in Toronto. “Your name doesn’t matter there.”

It’s crazy. Sixteen years ago, the Quebec government wrested from Ottawa the power to help select immigrants; it wanted to choose people who could best fit in here. Yet successive provincial governments (as well as Montreal administrations) have failed to hire anywhere near enough people of diverse backgrounds to make the public service a model of integration that could inspire the private sector to follow suit.

With their inward-looking hiring practices, public and private employers alike are shooting themselves in the foot. Quebec is neither attracting nor retaining enough immigrants to keep the economy strong.

Yes, I know: Openmindedness is always a good thing in and of itself. But it can also sometimes bring dividends to those who practise it.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Share

Aubin: Quebec’s welcome to immigrants is poor, yet few provinces’ economies are more in need of them

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.